Weekend Box Office: ‘Black Panther’ Is the First Movie Since ‘Avatar’ With Five #1 Weekends

There is a little movie in theaters called Black Panther. Maybe you’ve heard of it. Maybe you’ve seen it. Odds are you have; with $27 million more in ticket sales over the weekend, Panther has now crossed $600 million at the U.S. box office. It is just the seventh film in history to cross that threshold. Here’s the full weekend box office chart:

Film

Weekend

Per Screen

Total

1

Black Panther

$27,024,000 (-33%)

$7,049

$605,400,528

2

Tomb Raider

$23,525,000

$6,104

$23,525,000

3

I Can Only Imagine

$17,064,640

$10,476

$17,064,640

4

A Wrinkle in Time

$16,565,000 (-50%)

$4,162

$61,059,654

5

Love, Simon

$11,500,000

$4,788

$11,500,000

6

Game Night

$5,570,000

$2,074

$54,174,184

7

Peter Rabbit

$5,200,000 (-23%)

$1,908

$102,440,268

8

The Strangers: Prey at Night

$4,810,000 (-53%)

$1,952

$18,612,052

9

Red Sparrow

$4,450,000 (-47%)

$1,723

$39,583,642

10

Death Wish

$3,368,000 (-48%)

$1,259

$29,949,685

Black Panther continues to be one of the most remarkable box-office stories of the decade. It’s almost certain it will become the biggest movie in the Marvel Cinematic Universe at the domestic box office; The Avengers sits about $18 million away at $623.3 million. It should pass that number next weekend. (Worldwide, Black Panther’s $1.18 billion puts it in fourth place behind the two Avengers movies and Iron Man 3, which it will pass within weeks or days.) I expected Black Panther to be a massive hit, but not this massive. This is incredible.

In its fifth weekend in theaters, Black Panther still overcame the big new release of the moment: Tomb Raider, starring Alicia Vikander as Lara Croft. This rebooted version of the video game franchise grossed an estimated $23.5 million in its theatrical debut. That’s less than half what the first Tomb Raider movie (starring Angelina Jolie) made when it opened in theaters in 2001 ($47.7 million) but about on par with its sequel, The Cradle of Life ($21.7 million). CinemaScore voters gave it just a B, suggesting word of mouth will not be strong enough to push it into blockbuster territory.

A surprising blockbuster, at least for its budget, came in third place for the weekend, the faith-based film I Can Only Imagine, which also got an impressive A+ CinemaScore. The film, starring Dennis Quaid and Cloris Leachman, grossed $17 million. That not only beat expectations, it beat Disney’s massive adaptation of A Wrinkle in Time, which fell to third place on the box-office chart. Ava DuVernay’s children’s sci-fi film grossed $16.5 million, bringing its 10-day domestic total to $61 million. To date, it’s only made another $10 million internationally; it will need to earn a lot more than that to turn a profit for Disney. Fifth place for the weekend was the coming-of-age teen movie Love, Simon, which also received an A+ CinemaScore. It was a good weekend for smaller movies. Oh, and panthers. Panthers continue to do very well at the box office.

Speaking of smaller movies: The best per-screen average of the weekend belonged to another teen drama, The Orchard’s Flower. On three nationwide screens, the film grossed $57,851, for a PSA of $19,284. In second place for the weekend on a per-screen basis was Armando Iannucci’s bleak comedy The Death of Stalin, with an average of $18,143 at 32 locations around the country. Wakanda and Russia; theaters are a great place to go on a world tour right now.